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HAVING now a little time upon his hands,
the Captain thought of repeating his visit to the blind
lawyer, and fidler; and happening at an interval of
the blind man's lectures he drew him into conversation,
on the subject of the law. What is this common
law, said he, which you speak of, and why cannot
it be abolished? The common law of England!
why not a common law of our own; now that we are
an independent government?

It is our own common law, said the lawyer. We
derive it from a common source with the inhabitants
of Britain. Shall the people on that side the water
alone possess this jurisprudence, which our common
ancestors possessed, just because we have left the
island? It was because our birth-right to this law was
questioned that we resisted in war, and declared our
independence. The right to representation is a principle
of the common law, and this right was denied
to the colonies. The right of trial by jury is a principle
of the common law, and this in some cases, was
abridged, in others, taken away altogether. On what
ground were these defended; on the ground that
they were our inheritance by the common law.

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But why called common law? It was so called as
distinguished from the laws of particular places. It
was a system common to the whole people. The
term came into use after the heptarchy.

A ground of this law is reason; or the principles
of universal justice. The application of these principles
to particular cases, forms a great part of the common
law: the application of the principles of justice
to that infinity of cases, which arise on the intercourse
of men in a state of society: obligations independent
of contract, or contracts themselves. We
read the decisions in such cases, because the reason
of those who have gone before, is a help to those that
follow.

Rules of pleading, rules of evidence, the practice
of courts, are the result of experience, and our own;
or adopted by us, as a part of the common law. This
law forms a system begun in the woods of Germany;
taking its rise amongst our Saxon ancestors, it was
brought with them into Britain; receiving accessions
from what it found good in the island to which it
came.

Abolish the common law? why not abolish the art
of medicine, because it has been cuitivated in Great
Britain? Sydenham, Harvey and Mead, are thought
to have added to the science. The British chymists,
have increased the materia medica. Why not make
war upon the apothecaries, because they sell English
drugs?

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Just at that instant a hurly burly was heard half
a square distant; people rushing into an apothecary
shop, and jugs thrown out at the window. It was a
mob collected to break up the Doctor.

A Latin master from the college, lifting up his
hands in the attitude of a man attempting to ring a
bell, was endeavouring to appease the multitude, in
such address as was on his tongue from the classic
authors: cives, cives, quis furor vos agitat! vesania
quæ versat! quæ dementia cepit! Infelix pecus! oh!
heu! proh hominum. Insanire decet, ratione, modoque.

It availed nothing. The outrage was continued.
Glass and earthen ware, broken; powders and liquids
filled the atmosphere with vapour, and a variety of
smells. Ah! said an orator, it is full time to return
to the simplicity of early times, when men had recourse,
in case of internal diseases, or external
wounds, to the barks of trees, or the plants of the
fields, and had not yet become acquainted with extractions
and decoctions put in phials, and called drops,
to make the well sick, and poison the living.

It would have made a good drawing in a picture, to
have seen the apothecary at work, in the mean time,
endeavouring to clear the shop, with a cudgel, sometimes
pelting a rioter; at other times breaking the
head of one of his own jugs.

A preacher stood by exhorting to carry on the
work. He had taken a text. “There is a time to
build, and a time to pull down.” He thought this a
pulling down time. The greater part of his audience
appeared to think him orthodox, and were shewing
their faith, by their works, at the expence of the
dispensary. Good God, called out the son of Esculapius,
will no one assist? shall I be ruined? The industry
of years dissipated in a day: all my

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laudanum, my pepper-mint, sulphur, vitriol, oils, acids,
my tartar, and arsenic; all gone to pot, or rather the
pots gone with them, jars, jugs, and glister-pipes:
what devastation! what havock! Is it for sport, or
for profit? Oh; the folly, the fury, the madness of
the populace! They are indeed the swinish multitude.
A herd of swine in a century, would not have
done so much damage.

At this point of the game, whether by design, or accident,
a cry of fire had been raised; and the fire company
with their engine and buckets were up, and began
to play upon the building, throwing the water in
at the windows, and at the door, so that the people in
the house, and the Doctor himself were as wet as rats,
and occasionally the pipe carried round with a sweep,
came upon the by-standers without. The preacher
got his Bible wet, and his Psalm book; and the Latin
master called out “Jam satis terris;” or that there
was rain enough; and the orator, thought it a new
way, of quelling mobs. The Captain said he had seen
something of the kind attempted in repressing bees,
when they swarmed, throwing water on them, and
that the riots of men were analogous.

But what can they mean, said a peace officer by attacking
this mans boluses? Do they mean to put an
end to the practice of physic? among the savages
they attribute aches, and pains in the flesh and bones,
to a bad spirit that has got into the muscles, and the
tendons, and by rubbing with the hand, and pressing
the parts they endeavour to expel it. The chaffing
has sometimes a good effect, and if there thould not

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be an evil spirit to drive out, it eases and relieves from
the complaint. But though exercise and temperance
may preserve health, and cold and warm bathing,
and friction of the joints may relieve from a
rheumatic pain, yet in a multitude of cases the specifics
of pharmacy may be found useful; especially in
a society of close population, where we have not woods
and forest to run in, and where sedentary occupations
keep people sitting half their time. And though after
all, the diagnosis, or distinguishing diseases, is in
many cases, but a guess, and the means of cure still
more conjectural, yet still there is something in the
province of science, and the skill of the well read and
experienced physician.

Why then do you not put the law in force against
such an attack upon the druggist, said an orator? You
see his chest of medicine broken open, before your
eyes, and his shelves pulled down, and the tables under
foot, and yet no one bound over, or the riot act
read.

Soft and fairly said the peace officers, all in good
time.

Take sail from the mast when there comes too
strong a blast. A madness prevails at present. It
will be but of a fortnights continuance. When the people
get a thing into their heads, the best way is to let
them go on. They will come to themselves by and
by.

But in the mean time they will do a great deal of
harm, said the Captain.

It is in the atmosphere said the orator! is it imported,
or of domestic origin, said a thinking man among
the croud.

It may be imported, or it may be of domestic origin
said a simple man; for both abroad and at home, we

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have instances of such madness occasionally breaking
out, owing to some subtil gas in the holds of vessels,
or that breeds in our own streets. It may come from
France or Ireland: but what is there to hinder it
springing up here, where there are as good materials
to work upon, as on the other side the water. Human
nature is the same every where.

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